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American Woman: The front line of the presidential political divide

Michele Workman wants four more cups of Joe (Biden) while she holds a sign near the MSNBC stage at Center College in Kentucky before the vice- presidential debate in October. Photo: Matt Stone/The Courier-Journal/Files

WASHINGTON – Michele Workman has been on both sides of the great divide.

“When I was young I was against abortion,” she said. “I even arranged for an anti-abortionist to come to my church to talk to us.”

A Baptist from Kentucky, she believed in church doctrine, which was pro-life and Republican.

Since then, she said, she has seen too much of life to support a ban on abortion. At 58 years old, she has moved away from the Baptist Church and become a Unitarian, a Democrat and a believer in freedom of choice on abortion. In a state where religion plays an important and often powerful role in directing people’s lives and politics, her transformation is unusual.

In America as a whole, however, Workman is hardly alone. She is part of the widening gap in gender politics that has opened since the 1960s between Republican and Democrat. It is women like her upon whom the Democrats will largely rely for victory in Tuesday’s election.

“I have seen terrible depression and fear in women (who are pregnant),” she said. “I have seen abused, neglected children because families can’t afford to have another child and don’t want another child. Not every woman should have to give birth just because it happens to her. I mean it’s not as if women want to have an abortion. I just don’t feel like I am able to judge them.”

The gender gap in American politics favours the Democrats by a wide margin. Pew Center polls show that it was as much as 56 to 37 in September, but by late October the gap had shrunk to 50 to 44. This narrowing sparked a renewed Democrat appeal to women in the last few weeks.

“If Mitt Romney had just pulled even with female voters it would become very hard for Barack Obama to win,” said Peter Hanson, a Denver University political scientist and expert on polls. “Women are a crucial element of the Democratic coalition.”

Romney has tried to attract women voters by pointing out that the struggling economy is also hurting them and by claiming that as governor of Massachusetts he had tried to build a cabinet of women.

That sparked his now-infamous comment about how his staff “brought us whole binders full of women.”

Since both Romney and vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan have promised to legislate against freedom of choice on abortion in any situation, that issue has taken centre stage – with men leading the debate. (One study found that 81 per cent of the media quotes on abortion come from men.) It would be a mistake, however, to believe that the women’s vote is simply a question of vagina politics.

She said health care is an economic issue for women because many homemakers rely entirely on their husband’s plan. If he dies, loses his job or becomes ill, the plan is lost for the whole family, as are the family’s savings and home.

Workman has worked as an administrator for Fortune 500 companies. She discovered that top-notch job applicants were rejected because they had a health problem that the company refused to insure.

“I have seen people rejected for nail fungus,” she said. “Many people don’t realize that this goes on.”

She is campaigning for Obama because she wants the affordable health-care law cemented so families will always have a plan to fall back on, she said.

In Florida, Maribel Balbin, a Miami-Dade administrator, also left the Republicans because of their opposition to freedom of choice, national public health care, gay rights and equal pay.

Maribel Balbin

“It would be very difficult for me to support just about any Republican candidate,” she said. “I am a woman first. So, when I look at a candidate that is my litmus test. My inner circle is about 90-10 liberal.”

She now defines herself as an independent.

Workman works for the Obama campaign telephoning voters mainly in Ohio. She said trying to swing voters in Kentucky and the neighbouring states of Tennessee and Indiana is hopeless, because too many people won’t vote for Obama simply because he’s black.

“They are white churchgoers and won’t vote for a black man,” she said. “I talked to a woman who agreed with me on every single issue, but she could not bring herself to vote for a black man.”